2026 has been a weird year for me. I'm one of the most "pro DIY PC" people you'll ever meet. I built my first PC around 20 years ago, and I've never touched a prebuilt since then, except for the purpose of reviewing them. And yet, this year, I bought a prebuilt—not for me, but still.

The early days of people having internet in their homes were pretty wild. Viruses were pretty much everywhere, and unlike now, many users had no clue what to do with them. I was a tween in the early '00s, but I remember intervening when my mom's PC had what felt like hundreds of them, with pop-ups and ads covering up the entire desktop, impossible to remove.

You don't have to buy a Mac Studio or RTX Spark system to get a mini PC that excels at AI. Acemagic used IFA 2026 to launch and showcase a raft of its latest compact desktops, including a fresh workstation based on AMD's Gorgon Halo chip, a premium Intel Panther Lake model, and even a pair of models with not-so-subtle tributes to classic Nintendo consoles.